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SW MN and Gold Canyon AZ | Compaction is over rated in my opinion. I used to worry about it after reading all the articles about it.
Several years back we had a couple years of wind storms that blew the corn down right after pollination. The corn that was standing was on the ends and on the 4 wheel drive tracks going across the field. Hmmm does that mean something??Maybe SOME compaction is good??
I remember putting in a plot for a dealer a couple springs ago. It was wet and his father had ran the disk over the field obviously seriously compacting the field. We planted into lumps and smeared sidewalls. Come fall we harvested upper 60 to low 70 bu off that plot!!
2 falls ago I had a great looking field of beans that were waist high low 60 bu field average. We had heavy rains in sept and I harvested what I could out of the field. I could not get the rest with my combine so I had the neighbor come in with his machine to finish. He made tracks and holes but got it out. I needed to put manure on that field so when it dryed up some (water gone out of the tracks) I chiseled the bad areas shut so the disk covering blades on the manure applicators had some soil to work with. They proceeded to put manure on that field with 7000 gal tanks packing the hell out of everything. I had no choice the manure had to go on. We had an open winter and good freeze thaw cycles. I planted corn there and had 190 bu average in that field the next year. There were no signs of yellow corn or compaction related problems in that field. This year I had beans on the field and according to the yield maps that wet area that we mudded and compacted all to you know what was the highest yielding area of the field!!!!!!!
This year the dry weather cracked that soil down 2 ft or more and our cold winters seems to heal all compaction problems.
In short I believe SOME compaction is needed.
Also I will never leave ANY crop out in the field waiting for better weather, It might not come and field conditions might get worse. If I can get it I will go for it. I made tracks in a field saturday on about 20 acres. Got it all out, now we have had 2 more inches of rain. If I would not have gotten it saturday I would be looking at not getting it at all now and would have 20 acres of corn sitting under water worth about $10500. I have all my good pattern tiled farms left to harvest.
I would rather get stuck in October than fall through the ice and try to pull out a combine in DEC when its zero out. Been there done that , never again. Its also not fun cleaning snow out of a machine.
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Minnesota harvest survey from the highway
